Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Funes, Mauricio

(Encyclopedia)Funes, Mauricio (Carlos Mauricio Funes Cartagena), 1959–, Salvadoran journalist and politician, president of El Salvador (2009–14). A television reporter, he became known for his news reporting an...

Meles Zenawi

(Encyclopedia)Meles Zenawi mĕˈlĕs zĕnäˈwē [key], 1955–2012, Ethiopian political leader, prime minister of Ethiopia (1995–2012), b. Adwa. After two years of medical studies at the Univ. of Addis Ababa, he...

Prabhakaran, Velupillai

(Encyclopedia)Prabhakaran, Velupillai vĕˈlo͞opĭl-lī präbhäˈkärän [key], 1954–2009, Tamil nationalist guerrilla leader in Sri Lanka. Involved as a youth in protests against discrimination against Sri Lan...

Bourke-White, Margaret

(Encyclopedia)Bourke-White, Margaret bûrkˈ hwīt [key], 1904–71, American photo-journalist, b. New York City. One of the original staff photographers at Fortune, Life, and Time magazines, Bourke-White was noted...

Viet Cong

(Encyclopedia)Viet Cong vēĕtˈ kông [key], officially Viet Nam Cong San [Vietnamese Communists], People's Liberation Armed Forces in South Vietnam. The term was originally applied by Diem's regime to Communist t...

Vazov, Ivan

(Encyclopedia)Vazov, Ivan ĭvänˈ väˈzôf [key], 1850–1921, Bulgarian poet, novelist, and playwright, the first professional man of letters in Bulgaria. His work was inspired by the political upheavals of the ...

Bendjedid, Chadli

(Encyclopedia)Bendjedid, Chadli shădˈlē bĕnjədēdˈ [key], 1929–2012, Algerian army officer and political leader, president of Algeria (1979–92). A noncommissioned officer in France's Algerian army, he fou...

Satyarthi, Kailash

(Encyclopedia)Satyarthi, Kailash, 1954–, Indian children's rights activist, b. Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, as Kailash Sharma. Trained as an electrical engineer, he taught college until 1980 when he began devoting hi...

CERN

(Encyclopedia)CERN or European Organization for Nuclear Research, nuclear and particle physics research center straddling the French-Swiss border W of Geneva, Switzerland. Established in 1952 as the provisional Eur...

Tirole, Jean Marcel

(Encyclopedia)Tirole, Jean Marcel, 1953–, French economist, Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1981. He was a professor of at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1984–91) and École Polytechniq...